and there is some political science research showing that just having that field office,, on the ground in a certain community does increase your share of the vote. but then there's a qualitative difference as well. the obama campaign, it's almost like a starbucks or a mcdonald's, a franchise operation, where every office is very much the same, it's all controlled by headquarters, they're all working off the same game plan, right down to every single office has what looks like this sort of nice grassroots touch, a poster on the wall that says, i support the president because, and then everybody has handwritten in their reasons they love obama underneath. every single office has that same poster, so it's very standardized, very controlled, very disciplined and they're all working off the same plan. romney actually does not have his own ground game at all. it's the r.n.c., the republican national committee that is operating the ground game for him and that's not necessarily a disadvantage, but it means he doesn't have that standardization, he is much more at the mercy at the strength of the r.n.c. and
